


Reality Check

by JackyM



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Existential Crisis, Fluff, M/M, and comfort, cecilos - Freeform, lots of fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-17
Updated: 2015-07-17
Packaged: 2018-04-09 20:30:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4363166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JackyM/pseuds/JackyM
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cecil has a late-night bout of solipsism.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reality Check

**Author's Note:**

> I'm posting some things from my Tumblr to here; I quite enjoy this so I decided to upload it here!

Cecil stirred in his sleep. He yawned and rubbed his eyes, and readjusted his position underneath three blankets to fall back asleep.

He turned around and, in the darkness, reached for Carlos in the darkness. Cecil had been expecting to feel Carlos’ warm, curled up form and had been expecting to hear Carlos’ soft snores, but Cecil heard nor felt nothing but cold, undisturbed sheets.

Carlos wasn’t there.

For a moment, Cecil was nothing but confused. He stared blankly into the darkness and squinted, wondering what had happened to Carlos. He was positive Carlos had fallen asleep next to him when he crawled into bed, certain that Carlos had quite visibly been there. If Carlos wasn’t there now, then…where was he?

It took Cecil another moment to think of a dozen different reasons.

Carlos could’ve been dragged off while he was sleeping, into a dark, endless, famished night that craved human souls. When the night claims a victim, it does so silently; Cecil had not a doubt in his mind Carlos would’ve been taken away without his knowing. Or the government decided it needed to drag off a random citizen for a spontaneous memory wipe, as was custom at the end of each month.

But what if it was something worse than a kidnapping, caused by the government or the night? Something that transcended the kind of fear caused by the worry of something happening in one’s life, one’s reality?

What if Carlos hadn’t been there to begin with?

What if he’d imagined everything up until this point, through his own means or through government brainwashing? What if he’d managed to fall in love with a figment of his imagination, a hallucination meant to distract and befuddle him? And what if he had? What did the past one, two years of his life mean? Did they mean anything? Were they even a part of his life? And now that Cecil had come to…what would happen to him?

Cecil was having difficulty breathing. He tried to get air into his lungs, and desperately wish his heart would just stop pounding. He was trying to get back to sleep. Trying to fall back into the terrifying vulnerable state of dormancy so that this terrifying question’s answer would be postponed. Of course Carlos wasn’t gone. Right? Right?

With a hardy swallow, Cecil reached, in the darkness, to the bedside table, for Carlos’ phone, where it was usually charging. Cecil felt his, and felt the gentle rumbling from within it, but…he didn’t feel Carlos’. He didn’t feel its familiar protective casing. He didn’t feel it at all.

He pulled his arm back, slowly, and repositioned himself underneath the covers. His heart was beating. Too quickly. Too quickly. This wasn’t a crisis. Carlos was fine, right? He was okay. He was fine. He was…

Not fine. Not okay. Maybe not even real.

Cecil couldn’t stop himself from crying now. Hot, wet tears pushed themselves from his eyes. He’d tried not to cry. He really had. But he couldn’t help doing what all humans do; succumb to fear, succumb to worry. The fear that no reality is real, the worry that there are people in those realities aren’t real. It kept him up on many nights. Cecil closed his eyes, and allowed himself to silently cry in bed, under three blankets he always slept under no matter how hot it became, his face turned towards the ceiling, his tears drying on his face.

He hardly noticed when the door opened, and a light shined on his face.

“Cecil?” came a familiar voice, “are you crying?”

“You aren’t real,” came a muffled voice, “nothing is. It’s all a rouse to lure me into security so I can be taken away and have my memories hassled with, so I’ll never truly know anything about anything. Even myself.”

“Oh, no,” said Carlos, turning his phone’s flashlight off and turning a lamp on, “Cecil, no, no, I’m right here!”

“Carlos?” Cecil asked, meekly, rolling over to face Carlos on the side of the bed he was standing at. He definitely had been crying; his eyes were wet and puffy, an occasional sniffle escaped him, and he looked tense and stiff.

“Scientifically speaking, that’s who I am.”

“You’re here?”

“Also scientifically speaking, that is what I am.”

“But…you weren’t before, and I…I didn’t know where you went.”

“Oh! Well, I heard a loud noise downstairs. You were sleeping soundly and didn’t hear a thing, but I did, because I have a keen, scientific sense of hearing. I went downstairs and used by phone as a flashlight, because I didn’t want to disturb Umbra and Tenebrae from whatever shadowy monster things they were doing, and, get this, Cecil! The noise was coming from underneath the sink! The sink creature just needed to be comforted, that’s all. I think it was having a bad night. It didn’t say it was, but from the sounds it made, I can be confident in my scientific conclusion that it was having a difficult time.”

“So, you…were there when I fell asleep.”

“Mhm! I just woke up and went downstairs. And then I came upstairs and I found you upset, and I was also upset because I didn’t know what had happened to make you upset! It’s not…my fault, is it?”

“Heavens no,” said Cecil, shaking his head and weakly smiling, “no, no. It’s me. I was just afraid that…um, Carlos?”

“Yes?”

“Can you do something I’m not expecting you to do? Something out of the blue?”

“Sure,” said Carlos, pulling his fluffy lab coat off and wrapping the sash around his head, “how’s this?”

“Definitely not what I was expecting,” Cecil said with a chuckle.

“Or, this…” Carlos continued, tying his lab coat around his waist, “did you expect this?”

“Nope! You’re…you’re definitely real. Oh, god, I’m so sorry that I…I’m sorry that I didn’t think you were…you were…that anything was…you know.”

“I do know,” Carlos said, leaning in and hugging his boyfriend, “and Cecil?”

“Hm?”

“It’s always okay, honey. I know. I understand.”

“I love you,” Cecil said, hugging Carlos back and gently kissing his neck, “I love you so much.”

“That is one of the most scientific facts there is. There’s another one just like it.”

“And what might that other fact be?”

“That I love you, too!”

When Carlos climbed back into bed with him, Cecil couldn’t help but smile. He couldn’t help but feel a brimming kind of warmth and fuzziness, knowing that he was in love with Carlos, and that everything in his reality, everything in all of its wonderfulness, existed.

For now, anyways.


End file.
